


to think that we could stay the same

by SecretReyloTrash (BadOldWest)



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Enemies to Lovers, F/M, Planet Naboo (Star Wars), Post War, Redeemed Ben Solo, Slow Burn, ethical questions on what to do with war criminals, me getting a little high on having dramatic twists, mentions of self harm
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-08-27
Updated: 2019-02-21
Packaged: 2019-07-03 03:49:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15810726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BadOldWest/pseuds/SecretReyloTrash
Summary: The War Council doesn't know, now that the war is over, how to proceed in dealing with the abdicated Supreme Leader Kylo Ren. All are more comfortable with complying with the Late General Organa's instructions: and Rey is reluctantly tasked with fulfilling them.





	1. Chapter 1

Victory isn’t as simple as blowing up a ship. 

Upon the mission that truly seals it, the crux that twists the hold that finally pins the First Order down is quiet, subtle, and barely causes a ripple in the greater galaxy. The Supreme Leader is transported back to base on her ship, but Poe is piloting, and she’s weak from fighting the last battle, and no one can say a word because no surrender has been given and it’s too soon to feel victorious yet. Even though she's there, it never feels real on the flight. She never thought victory could feel fragile. But pressed against her tired friends, draped together in a tangle of exhausted limbs while Poe is their capable pilot, no one can speak for fear of breaking it.

It’s not over all at once, but in waves, until the treaty is signed and the First Order’s army is disbanded and the Supreme Leader is imprisoned permanently. Where he will likely never see the light of day. Poe casually mentions the call to execute him. Rey closes her eyes during that meeting, lets her mouth go dry, lets herself feel horrified. Her distaste is obvious, cautious glances cast on her from around the table. Would she invoke something that would make the need for retribution irrelevant, ruin their victory, call on the name of the long-dead Skywalkers and the way they would have done things; causing shame to the people who had been their closest friends?

Poe is the only one so bold to prompt her;

“Is that not the Jedi way?”

She swallows, rising from her seat. 

“It does not feel like the Jedi way to weigh in on a man’s life, once he is no longer a threat. You may continue without me.”

And she leaves the room with that statement landing with a resounding thud. She is not a Skywalker. She is not the Jedi Luke was trained to be. The Jedi way, as it will be from now on, weighs heavy on her shoulders as she interprets and determines what that even means.

Victory is in waves, it’s not a switch that gets flipped, so when there are conflicts in each wave she feels more tired than battle ever made her. 

So when it hits that mark, The First Order is defeated: the cannons boom, and everything around Rey finally feels like it’s supposed to in the face of victory. She is wearing a white gown and a new medal weighs heavy around her throat and she and Poe make social rounds because he is the resistance hero and she is the unlikely heroine and everyone has pushed them towards each other since this started. It seems obvious.

Too obvious. Like blowing up a ship and saying that solves all your problems.

She likes Poe, but even as his arms come around her and they make a point to embrace, it feels as though they're trying to make something happen when they smile at each other. Like always, there is the flicker of attraction, but nothing more. Nothing that makes Rey, reluctant to touch and even more reluctant to open her guarded heart, willing to change these things. 

The air around her, feel of silver confetti and the sound of canons and people embracing, was exactly how she pictured it. Sharper, better maybe. More people. The periphery of things she wouldn’t think to think of, as a child raised in a desert. Libations, kissing, weeping, crowds that exhausted her. Dancing. It's a party. She feels unwelcome at parties, searching for islands of recognizability. 

Her silence isn’t noticed, her tears only for Finn as he embraces her and calls her back to the start, and end as soon as he and Rose band their limbs around each other and kiss in front of everyone. 

She doesn’t know how to celebrate. So she goes to the only place that must be quiet right now. 

The echo of celebration follows her as she descends, a balloon full of flashing light bounces down the corridor, couples who may have only just met on a high of victory slumped against the dark walls. She seems the only one marooned by the celebration instead of welcomed.

The cannons pulse in her ears, the sky above them rattling the ground she climbs down into. The glitter of her gown, chosen by someone else, scratches her rough palms, she doesn’t feel suited to this. Everything moves so slowly, dream-like, and her knees feel weak because she has no idea what’s next. 

The Resistance holding cell has a musty smell and is silent. A guard stirs, a tumbler of something boozy knocked aside on a table. She punches in her clearance code and enters for the first time since victory. They expected her to come sooner. They wanted her to try and search the Supreme Leader’s mind, an interrogation tactic. She refused responsibility.  

“Are you here to see the Supreme Leader?” the guard slurs, his tone ironic. Not a lot of resistance soldiers had clearance here, though she was sure some made rounds to see the man at his lowest point this evening. This was a victory, after all. 

Rey shakes her head. 

“No.”

Recently captured Supreme Leader Hux is _screaming_ at her when he sees her pass by, an attempt to bargain or even expel rage, and she’s had enough of that since his surrender. The man she goes to has been there much longer than the Supreme Leader. 

She goes to see Ben. 

Ben may have been the beginning of their victory, a wave that came about a year ago upon his surrender. This was the hardest part of achieving it, and it came far before the end of the war. Maybe that’s why it doesn’t seem real now. She still wasn't used to this. 

The early weeks were rough, he caused himself so much damage in his cell,  _despite this being his choice to abdicate,_  his conflict over it causing him to harm himself and Rey was summoned to heal him. She was not allowed to let him die by any means, and she sort of preferred that order to one of voting on his punishment. 

In the middle of the night, if she was on base, summons would come, and she would trudge down to his cell and do as Luke taught her, barely stitching him back together, as he was pinned and frightened. She was exhausted during those first few months, rarely getting a full night's sleep, and draining all of her energy into Kylo Ren's self-inflicted injuries from his tantrums. Black eyes, battered fists, once he dislocated his shoulder and no one knew how. He had no access to his use of the force, a pair of cuffs restrained all of his sensitivities. They could not restrain his anger. He was a mess of his own pain; with no one but himself to take it out on.

She was mainly shocked he never turned it on her. They barely spoke, or spoke of nothing beyond his wounds and her obligation to mend them, but he tolerated her help and didn’t try to kill her. It may have been the steady stream of guards holding him down of telling her to keep her distance unless absolutely necessary. These were not private matters. 

He was still useful, in those days. Information flowing out of him, his betrayal shameless. It was unnerving, how quickly he shook the teachings of the First Order to smugly give away all their secrets to new, if cautious, allies. But Rey had a feeling he knew he had to make himself essential then, over the timing of the war, so they wouldn't kill him.

Not so much now. He has told them everything they needed to know. Now he no longer bears scratches and bruises, his hair is about as clean as one can get in a prison refresher, and he meditates through his solitary days. He looks better. More like a man than a monster. 

She has not dealt with his choice yet. It is too distracting, too overwhelming, and if she took her enemy as  _just_  him, she would have lost this war by dropping her weapon when he dropped his. He had stopped fighting so she could continue. 

His smile is slightly bashful, slightly smug when he sees her. He stands up from his meditation mat. His uniform, a spot of ill-fitting olive green color, is the most jarring. Always has been, since he surrendered. The only black on him is his hair. 

“Come to gloat?”

She crosses her arms and leans on the wall across the glass of his cell. This does make her, self-consciously, raise her fingers to the medal around her neck. It feels inappropriate to be wearing here.

He can see as much of her as she can see of him. He stands with ease, hands folded behind his back. She fidgets, looks up and down that length of the cells to see if anyone watches. Most house huddled figures trying to sleep over the booming canons overhead, or are empty. There weren't a lot of First Order prisoners left to take, in defeat. It wasn't the nature of their training.

“No.”

She’s not talkative. Maybe if she stays silent, and lets him talk, he will rest a finger on exactly what is making her so uncomfortable tonight, a night for celebration. Armistice. He who can read her so well, so terrifyingly well. The impulse to rid the galaxy if him is never far from her mind because of this. 

“But you’re all dressed up,” he smiles, a little more in control of his surprise to see her. “Won’t that make any insults feel better? You look good in a dress, I’m sure that would pair well with your usual loathing of me. It’d be like it’s new.”

He's so rehearsed, prepared, that she can feel his mind whirring, going eight times as fast. He's obviously under-stimulated in there; his eyes glassy and a little too intense. Someone as brilliant as him trapped in a box. She could only imagine.

Rey shakes her head.

“Why did you do it?”

His bravado slips. His shoulders fall. 

“What do you mean?”

Her head rests slightly back against the wall behind her. It’s colder down here. Her bare shoulders are prickling with goosebumps. 

_“You had us.”_

Her throat closes. This will never  _feel_ over, because of what he could have-

They nearly had the resistance destroyed for good. He was so close to winning just one year ago. 

And he threw it all away and abdicated at the time where things were impossible for the resistance, where hope was…

It never feels real. It feels like a trap.

“I…I don’t know.”

He shakes his head back at her, looking at her feet. She takes a shaky breath. 

“Was it your mother?”

His defection, abdication,  _abandonment_  of the throne, was timed within the months following her death. Rey dared suggest it to Poe, who had cemented their incompatibility by insisting that it had nothing to do with Ren’s choice. It had to have.

He flinches and looks away. “I don’t know.”

She refused to believe otherwise. He was so conflicted in the early days, running on empty and his own grief driving him over a cliff. His abuse of himself, his body, his mind, in the months since he turned himself over to the resistance was clear. Something made him do this. And Leia's death seemed like that something.

Rey's fingers toy with the medal against her sternum.

“You had everything you could have ever wanted, why would you just give that up.”

“Don’t say that,” he glances knowingly up at her. “You know that isn’t true.”

She can't answer that. It's too loaded. It's too close to the end to start this now. 

Tears squeeze out; because it’s over, and the conflict she’s been pushing away inside her is rising up and leaking out of her eyes, leaking out of her mouth:

“They are deciding on the orders of execution for Hux.”

Ben nods. He’s been waiting for this. He will follow shortly after, if it goes how they both see it. 

“I was prepared to die when I first came here, Rey.”

“I can’t…I can’t vote on whether someone lives or dies because that proves that I  _should_  have a say in something-”

“I’ve signed orders of execution. As Supreme Leader I’ve called for the deaths of many of your friends.”

“So you’re saying I should just toss my input in there, it doesn’t matter what the implications are?”

Ben doesn’t smile like he’s protecting himself anymore. He smiles like he cares. 

“No. Just that this is what I did. And you’re not like me.”

He has _behaved_ for her. After breaking his own ribs, he has held himself still under her touch and administered the power to put them back in their place, even though the pain is equal to breaking them all over again. Ben is tolerant of her mending him. He stays a respectful distance from her dark thoughts, even when reading her mind so easily. He once nuzzled his face into her open hand as she examined a black eye he had given himself. In the early days, their touch-starved, captive Supreme Leader was suspected,  _by Poe who would know enough_ , of harming himself for the sole purpose of seeing his Jedi healer every few days of his imprisonment. 

They never state the obvious; that this is an exercise in meaninglessness, that he is powerful enough, that a medical droid would suffice, and yet him tearing himself apart and her knitting him back together is a dutiful practice in all the things she couldn’t do for him that he wants her to do now.

She can’t touch him now. She can’t heal him, because he’s not bleeding.

“How do you think they will vote, when it comes to me?”

She almost thinks he uses his powers to choke her. But the cuffs on him don’t allow that. It’s just her own throat closing up. She brings herself to the glass, touching where his cheek is level to. He presses his temple against it, to her hand. She sees his eyes close and his brow furrow, willing himself to feel her touch even though they both know he can’t. Not through there. 

The means of imprisoning a force-user have severed their bond, unless she too is inside the cell. Then, faint glimmers of their minds are open to each other. Nothing as connected as before. This shouldn’t make her see his willful imprisonment as a betrayal. But it does. And he’ll never know because he doesn’t have the ability to anymore. 

It has been so, so lonely. Victory. 

“I do not think your life will be spared.”

His eyes open up that vacuum that always pulls her in. His loneliness. His regret. He has pushed people away. He has done horrible things. Before she met him, she’d die to pull anyone closer. She didn’t do anything above survive. 

“Will you vote for my life?”

“I won’t,” her voice cracks. “I won’t vote at all. It’s not my choice.”

He hums, and nods, and stays pressed to the glass. Her vote on a council doesn’t matter. She’d be outvoted in an instant. It is a futile gesture.

The fact that she  _cares,_  however, does matter. 

“So you came to celebrate with me.”

She shakes her head. “Not to gloat.”

He catches her eyes, bent lower to reach them. His gaze is kind. “Not gloat. _Celebrate._ I can’t imagine how grim this is compared to upstairs.”

“I want this.”

“But I can’t even dance with you, Scavenger.”

She manages a shaky laugh. “I can’t dance.”

“Then you should learn. You have use for it, now.”

“I don’t-”

Her own brow rests against the glass. He gives off a pained noise and bends his knees, his face against the glass, chasing her warmth. His eyes search hers. That depth to them, sucking her under. It hurst to let herself fall into it. 

“Not ready to say goodbye?”

She nods. He is the only other force-user she knows. Even as her enemy, it is something she can't lose. Imprisoned is where she feels safest from him. But Poe has told her, he can't be in this cell forever. 

That Ben has become something kinder, something calmer, in the coming months should not add conflict to her soul. He has done terrible things. A few months of reform after that lifetime, after the ends of his family's lifetimes, is not enough now.

 _“That’s alright,”_   Ben tells her kindly, and it is the crack in her resolve that has her on the floor, her spine pressed to the glass, her knees to her chest. A sob shudders through her. She wants to stop feeling pity for him, to know that her vote in the huddle of seven more will make no difference in saving Ben Solo's life and to happily use hers to send him to the other side of the Force. No one would blame her. No one would think she was wrong. These are the things you must stomach when involved in a war. Leia knew that. Poe knows this. So did Luke. 

She sees Ben's feet out of the corner of her eye as she settles her head back against the wall of glass between them. Then, a shuffling on the other side. He rests himself in a mirror of her posture. She feels him turn towards her. 

“I’ve been ready for a long time.”

Victory had to change things. It's what almost made her fear it. They could not stay the same; snarking through a connection they were always too weak to sever, being one and the same and nothing at all alike. 

It's gone. The connection is gone, the person still here, but then soon to be silenced forever. 

Her heart shatters into a thousand pieces. Because he knew when he gave himself over. He didn't strike deals. He didn't leverage his own freedom. He looked her dead in the face and offered himself over knowing they might kill him someday. Because he didn't have what he wanted. Not as Supreme Leader. Not alone. 

He broke both of their hearts because he had to to end this war. 

The bond between them had glimpses when she tended his torn flesh. But not enough. It was gone. Rey had told him a million times she hated him and he managed to prove it was a lie in the most painful way possible. How appropriate, how like Ben, to need to make his point in such a way. Like breaking his hand just so she would heal it for him. 

Proving she cared for him didn't stop those things from being all unsaid. 

The war was over. And there was no use for the former Supreme Leader now that they were fixing the means of execution for the current one. It was unlikely he would be left alive, if any lingering loyalties to him were still strong. He'd be too much of a risk, trying to rise again. Poe had explained this, a datapad in hand, dryly and not even glancing up at her, like he was going over flight plans. 

Attraction, yes. Camaraderie, yes. But never love. Not after that. 

She feels him, his spine parallel to hers. Feels the closeness he craves, without needing their connection to know it. The night of celebration is spent with her back to his, reaching into nothing, and finding his hand.

Knowing she never will again. 


	2. Chapter 2

_ “Rey!” _

Her shoulders lift to shield her face. 

Not from a hit.

But from shame.

Finn is breathless at her side; she tears gear and mementos from her issued locker with a defined wobble to her lower lip.

“You can’t just walk away.”

She'd hoped to make her exit swift, unperceived, and undramatic. Perhaps it was a delusion to think she wouldn't be missed; and being reminded that she truly would staring her so dead in the face right now makes her stomach coil.

“I can,” she chokes out, her gloved hands ripping a silk ryoo flower Poe once made a show of giving her down from where she’d entwined it with wire to hang.

“Please,” Finn breathes, looking lost. “Don’t do this.”

“I don’t know what else to do,” Rey shakes her head. “I didn’t...sign up for this.”

Finn is in her space like he belongs there. 

That thought is too cruel. He does. He just has a way of knowing he’s welcome before she does. 

She bristles, but he’s there, he’s at her elbow, he’s  _ with _ her. And it’s all out of a kindness that she does not understand.

The closest person in her life had been one she could face with the distance of half a galaxy between them. 

Or one she could comfortably turn her back on so they could fight their same battles.

“If Kylo Ren is an issue you are so passionate about that you’ll leave over the outcome; why aren’t you here trying to  _ change it.” _

Her fists clench as she rips the contents of her locker, spare parts, a scarf, a jacket, bits and bobs all out of her allotted storage space and shoves it all sloppily into a rucksack. 

“Casting a vote is admitting there should be a vote for his life to begin with.”

She's acting principled; when in actuality she's just scared. And Finn sees right through it.

“And if you don’t think First Order defectors should die, why aren’t you staying here  _ helping _ them?”

“Because I could not go to him to make the choice if he should live or die before. I should have resigned myself to kill him years ago. But I did not.”

She stares into the shadows of the metal box in front of her. Resistance lockers were always grimy and unpleasant, reeking of the person who possessed it before. Reeking of memory. Sometimes of death.

"I _never_ can," she bites out before the tears come.

Rey wants to crawl into her locker; a small, steely-scented space.

She's been marking it with compulsive tallies. They stare at her, her days at war, mocking little white lines.

Like she never left.

A place a creature like her knows well.

There’s a quiver of a shaken head. A too-firm chin. Flaring nostrils.

“What about the Jedi? I’m sure there will be a mention of what to do with-”

She slams the door shut.

“I can’t just open a school, Finn. That requires research. That requires knowing how  _ schools _ are run. I won’t say I’ll never show up if the plans see themselves done, but I’m tired, and I don’t know why I’m here.”

“Why are you hoping other people take responsibility for these things Rey? Does it hurt too much to accept that weight onto yourself?”

Finn knows her better than she ever admitted. 

Her eyes squint shut.

_ “Yes,” _ she whispers, her hands white on the edges of her knapsack. “Yes, it hurts, and I’m tired.”

He pulls her into a crushing hug before even she knows she really needs one. 

“Rey,” he sighs, “I’m sorry. I understand. But the choices you’re pulling yourself out of, you know you’re going to regret things like that, right?”

She nods pathetically into his embrace. It’s a crushing feeling, the consequences she could be facing, feeling now that she should quit while she was ahead. What if she fought for him, _for Ben,_ and had to face his execution having failed?

Had to look at herself when he was gone and she had failed to save him?

War had given her, an aimless child sired on waiting and little scratched tallies, purpose.

Just as it gave the conflict in Ben something to gnaw on.

Anger was a hungry animal; it needed to be fed. Creatures like Rey and Ben ate well in the chaos.

Nowadays, there wasn’t that fight in it. It was monotony. Fixing a galaxy that was broken was more arduous than waiting for parents that would never come back. She’d know when that impossible thing was accomplished; her parents would be there. Her family. 

There was no “returning” to a better world that had to be forged. It just hung, suspended, slipping through her fingers as it dangled in front of her. She got edgy in meetings, snappish, and frustrated. Then resigned.

Then she just didn’t want to get out of bed anymore. And why bother?

The war was over.

And war has made her tired.

“Those are my mistakes to make.”

She said it with the apathy of girl who now knew that her parents weren’t coming back. A war had known casualties for her; this one waged against the First Order had finally killed her parents in a way, by making her see things as they were.

Which was not a better world. 

She hefts her bag over her shoulder. “I am working on plans for the school. I am.”

It sounds like a pathetic excuse.

“Rey,” Finn is trying to be careful with her. “Where are you going?”

His voice is soft, like he’s talking to a wounded animal.

She shakes her head swiftly. “It’s alright. Don’t worry about it.”

He looks hurt.

Knowing her more intimately than she ever wanted. Before she was ready. 

“Don’t go back to Jakku. Rey. Please. You’re so much more than that.”

“Just for a little while,” she sniffs roughly, childishly, like she wasn’t just crying, “it’s just for a short time. While I figure things out. Don’t worry.”

“Your parent’s aren’t-”

She takes a swift step back. Away from the empty locker. Away from this conversation. Away from her friend. 

“I know that. That’s not why I’m going back to Jakku.”

Maybe not for them, but it was plain on her face Rey would be going somewhere _to wait._

For whatever the reason: she was going back.

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Rey's not going to be back on Jakku long, I promise. 
> 
> I feel like Rey's choice to go back to Jakku and not help rebuild is going to be controversial, or at least need some defending, in that regression does not feel natural for such a strong character. But I like that about postwar fics: it's not always triumphant, and with Rey it's almost me trying to express the aimless anxiety that stemmed from my postgrad life. I'd had a successful, driven academic career and once it was officially "over" I had some major psychological handicaps that kept me from moving on to the next phase of my life. Someone like Rey, pushed into an immense, high-pressured role in a war at such a young age, might make choices that mirror Luke's. So this is kind of, even when we get to Naboo, a lot about finding "peace and purpose" between Ben and Rey; but more important in themselves.

**Author's Note:**

> So I've been planning a "Ben Solo on House Arrest in Naboo" story and I got a prompt on tumblr that just fit the vibe so this unexpectedly became chapter one of the story instead of the start I was planning. Thanks, Anon, the Mitski song you requested ended up inspiring a lot more creativity.


End file.
